Bucknell Celebrates National Engineers Week

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March 10, 2005

By Lindsay Hitz

LEWISBURG, Pa. — From designing banners to filming videos to writing poetry, Bucknell University engineers revealed their creative sides during National Engineers Week.

Students and faculty from all six engineering departments at Bucknell —biomedical, chemical, civil and environmental, computer science, electrical, and mechanical engineering — joined in the fourth consecutive Golden Hammer Contest held Feb. 20 to 26.

"Engineers Week brings students together to work on activities that are fun. The events get faculty involved and break us out of our normal routine," said Karen Marosi, associate dean of engineering, who describes National Engineers Week at Bucknell as a "bragging rights contest of friendly camaraderie."

Founded in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers, National Engineers Week was created to raise awareness of the contributions of engineers and to promote recognition of the importance of engineering

At Bucknell, the National Engineers Week celebration includes the Golden Hammer Contest, a competition consisting of seven events culminating in the awarding of the spoof golden hammer to the department with the most points at the end of the week.

The competitions are an "entirely student driven event," said Marosi. A student planning committee of about 10 upperclass students plans and coordinates the week's events. This year's events had a strong turnout of engineering students with over half of all majors participating at some point.

The week concluded with a networking event with engineering alumni and the engineering dinner on Friday, with an attendance of 452 including students, engineering alumni, faculty, and staff.

"One of the biggest highlights of the week for the students," said Marosi, "was the video competition with students from all class years and all six departments submitting light-hearted videos with topics relating to engineering."

The top videos, which were played at the dinner, included this year's winning video, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," by the electrical engineers. The Golden Hammer, however, was presented to the chemical engineering department, which also received a plaque to be kept until next year's competition.

Other dinner highlights were the presentation of the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award to Richard Garman, Class of 1956, by the Bucknell Engineering Alumni Association. This award annually recognizes members of the College of Engineering's alumni community who have distinguished themselves through extraordinary commitment to the college and the university, exemplary professional achievement, or noteworthy contributions to society.

With the culmination of National Engineers Week, the overall results and student responses were positive. One important outcome was the networking event, allowing alumni to talk about careers in engineering and connecting students with alumni," said Marosi. More than 30 engineering alumni traveled back to Lewisburg to speak with students about their careers in engineering and related fields.

Overall, celebrating National Engineers Week has been a long tradition at Bucknell, according to Marosi. "Since our first president has been described as America's first engineer, National Engineers Week is traditionally held near his birthday. Next year's celebration will be Feb. 19-25," she said.

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